Tuesday, January 4, 2005

I spent the evening taking the lights and ornaments off the Christmas tree, which only now is beginning to drop a few needles. I'll take it outside tomorrow morning.

One of the nice things about cutting your own tree is that it stays alivefor weeks if you keep it watered. Ours is still drinking about a quart of water a day, and it was taking in almost half a gallon a day at first. (It's a big tree.)

But that's the problem, for me -- it's still alive. I contemplated stopping watering it days ago, knowing that it was coming down. But I just couldn't. It would be like . . . starving a pet.

It's kind of weird, but I always feel sorry for the tree when we put it out by the curb. We picked it out, brought it into our home, lavished decorations on it, made it the center of many celebrations. And now we're just going to throw it out into the street?

You know, I felt that way for many years. Then I started buying live trees in 5-gallon tubs and replanting them when Christmas was over, but the back yard is limited in size. Now I do the plastic tree thing, and as I look at it I think there's a baby tree somewhere that wasn't sacrificed for my pagan observances.